


The Art of Emptiness Inside and Out

by SamStartsARiot



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 04:48:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3434111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamStartsARiot/pseuds/SamStartsARiot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's two years before Dave can even admit that his cure is a problem of it's own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Emptiness Inside and Out

**Author's Note:**

> This work has the potential to be very triggering for anyone who suffers or has suffered with an eating disorder or disordered eating. Please be careful if you choose to read this. 
> 
> In which I have too many feelings so I make Dave deal with some of them for me. Also he has synesthesia because I do and this is shamelessly about me.

It comes in a moment of weakness. Dull pain coming from his bruised knees, aching throat. Tears cutting tracks down his cheeks, streaming from bloodshot eyes. Pale fingers shaking, his knuckles are scratched up and he's knows it's a classic sign of this disease but he's a boy and when people see his hands they think he punched a wall, not that he stuck his fingers down his throat. His body feels as though it's been thoroughly steamrolled and yet simultaneously like it doesn't belong to him at all. Most of all he feels miserable and giddy and _empty_ and that's the goal isn't it. He wants to be empty enough to disappear. For the first time he thinks maybe it's time to stop this, but he's so afraid and the numbers and colours are choking him again. For the first time he thinks maybe he doesn't have control of this anymore.

Dave is 140 disgusting pounds and he can hear them circling like wolves as he sits in class. Bright hues that he recognizes for what they truly mean, his failure. Little whispers that remind him to plan plan plan. What's for lunch, how much of it can he eat before they wrap around his neck and choke him, how little can he possibly get away with before there are questions. He's torn. The lesson is forgotten. Each day is like this now and he slowly watches the colors slips from red to blue to lighter blue and settle at an ugly brown that means he's a failure. When his report card comes he waits for his brother to be angry and realizes that his brother doesn't even look at his grades anymore. Doesn't care to, and Dave knows that if he could just do better his brother would care again, would look him in the eyes again. Would look anywhere but into the eyes of his dealer. But he knows his brother never will because he's a failure and he doesn't deserve to be loved. Doesn't deserve to eat. He reminds himself of that for three days. The stars dance around his eyes when he stands and he waits for them to make him beautiful.

Each day he watches the light fade from his brother's eyes. He begins the vanishing act as well, but for different reasons, a side effect of his cure rather the cure itself. He says it out loud as he think it. "cure". It feels right in his mind but tastes sour on his tongue. He walked into this trying to fix something, but he doesn't remember what that was anymore. He know that if he keeps trying it will be fixed, he's gone too far now to turn his back on this. It's the only truth he knows.

When Dave is 17 and 5'10 and 110 pounds (Green, red, and blue numbers respectively) he wishes more than anything for that beautiful even 100 (white and clear, he knows he would feel so clean), and in a rare moment of sobriety his brother really looks and him and for a second Dave think he even looks worried, but before he can make sense of it his brother is on the other side of the room they share and Dave doesn't turn to see the needle go into his arm, or the powder to his nose, or the smoke into his lungs. He's seen them all and he doesn't need to know the poison his brother's picked to leave the world behind today. He wishes that he mattered enough to stick around, but he stopped hoping for it years ago.

The first time he passes out he's just eaten two apples (95 bright red and fuschia calories each) and is on his way to the bathroom to take care of the problem. The stars dance a little too close around the edges of his vision and suddenly he's on the ground.. His brother finds him and forces to eat a bowl of cereal because that's all they've got in the house and doesn't let him run to the bathroom to get rid of it because he's seen what's going on. He cries and screams and his dead eyed brother holds him there and screams right back and he hates his brother and the numbers and the colors and his own damn brain for making them all so god damn unbearable. His brother says he needs to stop this or he's going to fucking die and Dave wants to laugh in his stupid fucking hypocritical face. Wants to laugh because he doesn't think he cares anymore about dying.

Until the day at school when he can't remember the last time he ate something substantial, and he feels like flying flying flying to the stars and he steps forward to do that but all he sees is the tile floor coming up to meet him. Then there are doctors and nurses and psychologists and police officers. He sees his brother only one more time before he's sent to a court mandated rehabilitation program and Dave is told that he's a very very sick young man and will be in the hospital for a while. Wide eyes so warmly brown that in some lighting they almost seem red stare out from a pale face and it's been such a long time since he's seen his reflection. His eyes look just as empty and dead as his brothers and he cries because he doesn't want to be sick but most of all he doesn't want to be well. He's 5'10 and frighteningly skinny at 104 pounds (brown and boring, the number makes him feel ill.) but it's still not enough. He's still broken and he doesn't know how to fix himself.

It's six months in the hospital and another four in a group home for mentally ill teenagers before he's 18 and he doesn't hold his breath around food quite so much anymore and he's not quite well but he can't believe how sick he was before when he sees the old pictures from the emergency room. He stands tall and proud at a healthy 5'11 and 140 pounds and even though the number isn't beautiful it doesn't make him sick because he understands how little it says about who he is. That his sickness was the farthest thing from a cure, even though he convinced himself for so long that it was true. He's started visiting his brother and he's not even so angry now as he was when he first started therapy and started feeling again. Hell, he even has a best friend named John who ended up in the group home after he cut himself up real bad. They get into a lot of trouble together. He's happier than he ever dreamed of being.

None of it is perfect, but he doesn't need it to be anymore. He is not perfect but he doesn't need to be anymore. The numbers loosen their grip around his neck and he rips them off because he's done not having control over his own life and he's tired of just existing.

And slowly, Dave learns to live again.


End file.
